Harnessing the Money in the Web

We've all hear the expression a "penny saved is a penny earned." Many of us don't believe that any more because we can't find anything anymore that costs a dollar much less a penny. I believe the statement is still true and wanted to try and squeeze the the penny a little harder. Ebay and google have demonstrated that you can make millions using pennies. Ebay listings aren't very expensive and google ads are also relatively cheap. If you get enough of them out there then your bound to bring in a little bit of money. Anyone that has done any investing knows that diversity is a good thing, so I've tried to diversify the ways that I make money on the Internet. Here's a list of my portfolio in the order of which one has brought in the most money. I've also split them into two different categories: those that you have to put money into and those that are free.

Prosper
Peer-to-peer lending. This is the ebay of the loan industry. Being greed here will lose you money. You need to put in at least $50 to start off with and it will slowly trickle back to you over the next three years. Here you can diversify between people that you loan your money to and get some pretty good interest rates. Mine is at about 14% right now. At this point I've stopped investing any more money there I'm just reinvesting it else where. From other blogs that I've read some people have had problems with people being delinquent. I just check to make sure that they had a good debt to income ratio before I lent any money and so far I haven't had anyone be delinquent yet. I would suggest that you only invest a small amount of money each month because then you can skim the quality loans off of the top without stretching into the people that are more likely to default.

Online Banking:
For security purposes I won't name this company but I made just over $100 last year because of the interest this last year.

Posters @ Fotki
Fotki allows you to upload and sell you photos with there premium account which can be customized. I've upload the best of my flower and scenery images here which can be purchase as posters.

Interactive Websites & Activities
I've created several interactive websites that contain ad's which bring in a little bit of money but they require a server behind it to work.

• Math Facts Question Generator
  Create a random order of basic math questions with an answer key such as 1 + 1 and 2 * 2
  
• Random Student Selector
  This program was created to a teacher randomly select students to answer questions in class.
  
• Moodle Math Question Generator
  Moodle is an online learning environment and this script will create math fact questions for that environment.
  
• Flash Activities
  
• Flash Line Grapher
• General Grapher
  This is a very useful module where someone can create a graph on the web page or on there computer.
  
• Finding the GCF
  Simple flash tutorial describing how to find the Greatest Common Factor.
  
• Algebra Worksheets
  Worksheets that other teachers can use to distribute to their class.
  
• Factoring Polynomials Worksheet
  

The following ways that I've made money do not require any outlay of money.

Google Adsense:
I've placed ads on sever websites that I run, this being one of them. Some of these have cost me some money but the adsense has helped to reduce the cost of those sites though it hasn't yet meet there expense.

Zazzle.com
Zazzle is an on demand company allows you create a product such as a t-shirt, mug, poster, postcard, hat, tie, and much more and it will create the product when it is ordered. You simply provide the picture and the create the product and ship it for you. Personally I've ordered the Pumpkin pi mug and some of the note cards that I've created and am pleased with their quality.

Lulu.com
Lulu is another on demand company but the specialize in printed material. The produce many types books and posters. I don't have much with this website yet but I have some math resource that I hope to publish soon.


MicroStock Photography
This has been a little harder to get into. So far I've messed tried to get into the following microstock companies.

• fotolia click the link to see my portfolio
  
• iStock
• ShutterStock
• StockXperts
  

Some of them have been harder to get into than others because of the submission of several photos to pass an initial test on the quality of your photography. As of yet I haven't made any money with these websites but I've only posted 2 pictures that have been accepted so far so I can't expect much. It's also not true with this one that it does not require any outlay of money because you will need a descent camera to be able to accomplish this. These companies are looking for quality images not just snapshots.

So the moral of the story is that you have to do something to make something. After a while the Internet has the potential to work for you but you have to work to keep it working and at this point it hasn't been worth it's time yet but I'll make a final decision on that later. Until then I'll keep enjoying the hobby of trying to make money grow on trees.